House Hearing, 114TH Congress - Western Hemisphere Drug Interdiction Efforts

WESTERN HEMISPHERE DRUG INTERDICTION
EFFORTS
(11421)
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
COAST GUARD AND MARITIME TRANSPORTATION
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
TRANSPORTATION AND
INFRASTRUCTURE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
JUNE 16, 2015
Printed for the use of the

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
(
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committee.action?chamber=house&committee=transportation
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95072 PDF
2015
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COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania, Chairman
DON YOUNG, Alaska
PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee,
Vice Chair
Columbia
JOHN L. MICA, Florida
JERROLD NADLER, New York
FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey
CORRINE BROWN, Florida
SAM GRAVES, Missouri
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
DUNCAN HUNTER, California
RICK LARSEN, Washington
ERIC A. RICK CRAWFORD, Arkansas
MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts
LOU BARLETTA, Pennsylvania
GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California
BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
BOB GIBBS, Ohio
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
RICHARD L. HANNA, New York
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida
DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
JEFF DENHAM, California
JOHN GARAMENDI, California
CARSON, Indiana
REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin
ANDRE
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky
JANICE HAHN, California
TOM RICE, South Carolina
RICHARD M. NOLAN, Minnesota
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina
ANN KIRKPATRICK, Arizona
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania
DINA TITUS, Nevada
RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois
SEAN PATRICK MALONEY, New York
MARK SANFORD, South Carolina
ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut
ROB WOODALL, Georgia
LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
TODD ROKITA, Indiana
CHERI BUSTOS, Illinois
JOHN KATKO, New York
JARED HUFFMAN, California
BRIAN BABIN, Texas
JULIA BROWNLEY, California
CRESENT HARDY, Nevada
RYAN A. COSTELLO, Pennsylvania
GARRET GRAVES, Louisiana
MIMI WALTERS, California
BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia
CARLOS CURBELO, Florida
DAVID ROUZER, North Carolina
LEE M. ZELDIN, New York
SUBCOMMITTEE
ON
COAST GUARD
DUNCAN HUNTER,
DON YOUNG, Alaska
FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey
BOB GIBBS, Ohio
MARK SANFORD, South Carolina
GARRET GRAVES, Louisiana
CARLOS CURBELO, Florida
DAVID ROUZER, North Carolina
LEE M. ZELDIN, New York
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania (Ex Officio)
AND
MARITIME TRANSPORTATION
California, Chairman
JOHN GARAMENDI, California
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
CORRINE BROWN, Florida
JANICE HAHN, California
LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
JULIA BROWNLEY, California
PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon (Ex Officio)
(II)
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CONTENTS
Page
Summary of Subject Matter ....................................................................................
iv
WITNESSES
Vice Admiral Charles D. Michel, Deputy Commandant for Operations, U.S.
Coast Guard:
Testimony ..........................................................................................................
Prepared statement ..........................................................................................
Rear Admiral Karl L. Schultz, Director of Operations, U.S. Southern Command:
Testimony ..........................................................................................................
Prepared statement ..........................................................................................
3
30
3
36
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

Written statement of Michael P. Botticelli, Director, Office of National Drug
Control Policy .......................................................................................................
76
(III)
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WESTERN HEMISPHERE DRUG INTERDICTION

EFFORTS
TUESDAY, JUNE 16, 2015
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
SUBCOMMITTEE ON COAST GUARD AND MARITIME
TRANSPORTATION,
COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:15 p.m., in room
2253, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Duncan Hunter (Chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. HUNTER. This subcommittee will come to order. Welcome everybody. The subcommittee is meeting today to review the Federal
Governments efforts to confront transnational drug smuggling and
stem the flow of illegal drugs to the United States.
Let me start by saying I had a great trip down in Florida with
you, Admiral Schultz, great, great time with JIATF [Joint Interagency Task Force] and General Kelly, and I got to see firsthand
the problems that our Nation faces in stemming the flow of illegal
drugs to our shores.
My visit to the Coast Guard units as well as JIATF South was
insightful. I was able to witness the impact limited resources and
deteriorating assets is having on the Coast Guards ability to effectively carry out its drug interdiction mission.
The flow of illegal drugs to the United States continues to be a
problem. Illegal drugs placed a strain on our Nations healthcare
and criminal justice systems. Their smuggling routes and methods
are easily translated into transport routes for other illicit goods
that pose significant safety and security concerns to U.S. citizens.
Some of the most notorious and violent criminals, cartels, and
narcoterrorists are directly responsible for drug violence, crime,
and corruption that are destabilizing foreign nations and endangering the lives of American citizens here and abroad. Representing
southern California, I am very aware of the harm violent drug traffickers inflict on our communities.
In recent years, violence stemming from the drug trade has
spilled over the Mexican border and has led to the kidnappings and
murders of American citizens and U.S. law enforcement officers. It
was only a few years ago that a Coast Guard servicemember lost
his life during counterdrug operations near Santa Cruz Island,
California.
Coast Guard Senior Chief Petty Officer Terrell Horne was leading a boarding team when he was critically injured interdicting and
apprehending illegal drug smugglers. The Coast Guard recently an(1)
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nounced it will honor Senior Chief Hornes sacrifice by naming a
Fast Response Cutter after him.
The Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, and allied partner nations continue
their efforts to stop boat drug shipments at sea. Interdicting shipments of drugs at sea before they are broken down into smaller
packages is the most effective and efficient way to stop the flow of
illegal drugs across our borders.
The Coast Guard is the lead agency in maritime interdiction because it has unique military and law enforcement authorities which
enable it to seamlessly disable a drug smuggling vessel, seize the
drugs, and arrest the crew. But that only works when the Coast
Guard, SOUTHCOM [U.S. Southern Command], and partner agencies and nations have the resources and assets to act on intelligence targets.
Unfortunately, however, cuts to the militarys budget, sequestration, and aging and rapidly failing Coast Guard assets are undermining mission success. In recent years, SOUTHCOM and the
Coast Guard were only able to interdict slightly more than 20 percent of the cocaine bound for the United States. That is roughly
half the national target for 2015.
In addition, the Coast Guard has been consistently unable meet
its internal performance goal for drug removal in the transit zone.
In fact, since 2009, the Coast Guard has only achieved its cocaine
interdiction target once. I hope todays hearing will help clarify the
direction we need to take in the future to ensure our men and
women in uniform have the resources and assets that they need to
carry out this and other critical missions.
With that, I yield to Ranking Member Garamendi.
Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and
thank you for holding the hearing and for the witnesses. It is good
to see you once again and look forward to your testimony.
This hearing is very, very important. We need to understand our
efforts and the effort of our international partners to interdict the
flow of illegal drugs into the United States from points all across
the Western Hemisphere.
At the hearing convened last April, I stressed that the current
age of budgetary austerity, it remains essential for Congress to
scrutinize every drug interdiction program to ensure that the various Federal agencies involved are best coordinating and utilizing
their resources to the greatest effect in the transit zone. That sentiment is just as valid today as we take up this matter again.
Additionally, I also voice concern about the imminent operational
gap that the Coast Guard will have to contend with its aging legacy fleet of High and Medium Endurance Cutters as they are decommissioned or laid up more frequently for emergency repairs and
maintenance.
If anything, the recent hearing last month on the Coast Guard
acquisition activities further corroborate my belief that the Coast
Guard is going to be extremely hard pressed to maintain its existing capabilities, much less increase the tempo of their operations,
and as you suggest, Mr. Chairman, make their bogey, that is, to
get the number of drugs that they intend to.
This raises the fundamental question, if the Coast Guard operational readiness and capability is likely to be degraded, at least
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until we begin to see the delivery of the new Offshore Patrol Cutters, where can we turn now to find the assets and resources necessary to plug the hole? Unfortunately, it would appear that the
Navy is not where we will go. They are scaling back the number
of frigates and other assets it deploys through SOUTHCOM to support the JIATF operations.
Moreover, despite the fact that the transit zone across the Western Hemisphere is roughly twice the size of the continental mass
of the United States, other bureaus within the Department of
Homeland Security continue to disproportionately allocate resources to reinforce the southern border, notwithstanding the data
demonstrating that the maritime routes are becoming the preferred
option for international criminal syndicates, and if supplemental
resources are not going to be forthcoming soon, this leads us back
to another fundamental question.
How can we reasonably expect the Coast Guard and other Federal agencies, for that matter, to accomplish their vital missions?
As I stated at the last hearing: If we want to succeed in our efforts
to prevent illegal drugs from entering our country, we can no
longer ignore the fact that inadequate Coast Guard budgets have
left the Service out on the precipice, and until we have resolved the
issue of this reality in full, we are far more likely to see more illicit
drugs, more illegal migrants and other harmful contraband crossing our shores.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. HUNTER. OK. I thank the gentleman.
And before we introduce our witnesses today, I would like to introduce some gentlemen that just came in, World War II merchant
mariner veterans. I just want to say thanks for being here, gentlemen. Appreciate it.
In fact, we are trying to get ahold of Ms. Janice Hahn, who has
been carrying your legislation, our legislation now for quite awhile,
and I just want to let you know that we are working on it, so
thanks for being here. Appreciate it.
Our first witness today is Vice Admiral Charles D. Michel, the
Coast Guards Deputy Commandant for Operations. Vice Admiral,
you are now recognized.
TESTIMONY OF VICE ADMIRAL CHARLES D. MICHEL, DEPUTY
COMMANDANT FOR OPERATIONS, U.S. COAST GUARD; AND
REAR ADMIRAL KARL L. SCHULTZ, DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS, U.S. SOUTHERN COMMAND
Admiral MICHEL. Sir, before I start my statement, with the committees permission, if I could just take a couple of minutes to talk
about a breaking news item.
Mr. HUNTER. Absolutely.
Admiral MICHEL. Sir, this is a picture of a semisubmersible that
the U.S. Coast Guard interdicted this morning in the eastern Pacific. It was interdicted at first light by one of our Coast Guard
units, and our Coast Guard units are on board. They have control
of the vessel. They also have four detainees on board, and it is estimated 3,000 kilos of cocaine, or 3 metric tons of cocaine are on
board this vessel.
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We will have to pull it off to actually count it, but that is what
the initial estimates are. As you can seeand I will pass around
the picture of this vessel. This is a classic semisubmersible. It is
about 50 feet in length. You can see the water-cooled exhaust that
they put in place here to keep heat sensor detection down. You can
see that it is painted to match the color of the ocean. It is almost
undetectable. I will pass this around.
I cant answer any specific details in the open forum here, but
after the hearing, I am happy to talk to you about the details of
this interdiction, but this is what we are facing today, sir, and this
was taken down this morning.
Mr. HUNTER. Way to go.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Congratulations.
Admiral MICHEL. Well, sir, congratulations to the Nation, and
this is really a whole of Government team, including JIATF South
that was engaged in this. It was the Coast Guard that took it
down, but there is a lot more going on there than just the Coast
Guard.
So with your permission, I would begin my statement.
Mr. HUNTER. Please.
Admiral MICHEL. Chairman Hunter, Ranking Member
Garamendi, members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today on Coast Guard drug interdiction operations. My complete statement has been provided to the subcommittee, and I ask that it be entered into the record and that
I be allowed to summarize my remarks.
Mr. Chairman, we continue to face a significant threat from
transnational criminal organizations in the Western Hemisphere
that use drug transit routes to the southern approaches of the
United States. These illicit networks are advancing their deadly
trades with coercion, intimidation, violence, and near impunity in
our closest neighbors and in our border regions. Transnational
criminal networks destabilize our neighbors, exploit our citizens,
endanger public health, and threaten regional stability, and national security.
Last summers influx of over 50,000 unaccompanied children was
a tragic symptom of the regions instability and violence. Parents
by the tens of thousands decided that it was better to turn their
children over to human traffickers, who we call coyotes, for a
chance of life in the United States rather than to live in countries
wracked by some of the worlds highest homicide rates resulting
from transnational organized crime.
In September of 2014, Admiral Zukunft signed the Coast Guards
Western Hemisphere strategy that calls out three strategic priorities: combatting networks, securing borders, and safeguarding
commerce. This strategy recognizes that the Coast Guard is
uniquely positioned to attack a key center of gravity of
transnational criminal networks.
The unmatched capability of maritime interdiction allows for the
interdiction of concentrated, often multiton loads of expert quality
drugs at sea before they can reach land and be broken down into
small quantities that not only become extremely difficult to police
but also cause death and devastation as they make their way to
North American markets.
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The cocaine trade, in particular, is uniquely vulnerable as the existence of the Darien Gap means that virtually all cocaine exported
from South America must at some point during its journey travel
by air or maritime means. This movement exposes conveyances to
sensors and interdiction.
In addition, maritime interdiction often allows for the assertion
of U.S. jurisdiction over the witnesses and evidence vital to identifying and attacking transnational criminal organizations closest to
the head of the snake. Maritime interdiction against mostly go-fast
boats, however, typically require sophisticated detection monitoring
techniques in vast ocean spaces and an endgame carried out by
flight deck-equipped cutters with embarked day/night airborne-useof-force helicopters.
Coast Guard ships are the Nations and our neighbors defense
forward against the transnational criminal threat beyond our land
borders, beyond Mexico, and beyond Central America. When we detect a suspect vessel, our cutters, helicopters, and highly trained
pursuit boat crews have a nearly 90-percent interdiction success
rate.
Over the years, our operations have become extremely lean and
efficient with the vast majority of interdictions happening as a result of intelligence cueing. In the last month alone, the Coast
Guard has been involved in 22 counterdrug cases that have resulted in the arrest of more than 50 suspects, the removal of more
than 12 metric tons of pure uncut cocaine on the sea, and that does
not include this interdiction that I showed you this morning, sir.
And denial to criminal networks of more than $400 million wholesale in drug proceeds.
While we have made substantial improvements in our tactics,
techniques, and procedures, resource constraints leave us able to
target only 37 percent of the high-confidence intelligence cases, almost always due to a lack of surface vessels.
To close this gap, the Coast Guard has undertaken four specific
initiatives. We have increased our offshore presence to interdict
drugs at sea, the initial results of which are encouraging. We have
continued to build upon the 43 international maritime law enforcement bilateral agreements and work closely with the Department
of State and our international partners in these interdiction efforts.
We are fully integrated in in Secretary Johnsons vision for unity
of effort and the DHS [Department of Homeland Security] task
forces to secure Americas southern border and approaches, and we
continue to move forward with the acquisition of the affordable Offshore Patrol Cutter.
Recapitalizing the medium endurance cutter fleet with the OPC
[Offshore Patrol Cutter] is the Coast Guards number-one investment priority and is critical to our offshore presence and core missions. By the time we begin laying the keel for the first OPC, some
of the legacy cutters they are scheduled to be replace will be more
than 55 years old, well beyond their intended service life.
The time to recapitalize the fleet is now, and we are on schedule
to award OPC detailed design in fiscal year 2016. In summary, the
Coast Guard continues to exploit the unique benefits of maritime
interdiction to combat transnational criminal networks. This forward defense of the Nation and the region applied at a critical cen-
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ter of gravity for transnational criminal networks requires highly
specialized maritime assets and crews that are capable of countering a well-equipped, adaptable, and ruthless adversary.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today and for
all you do for the men and women of the United States Coast
Guard. I look forward to hearing your concerns and questions.
Thank you.
Mr. HUNTER. Thanks, Admiral.
Our next witness today is Rear Admiral Karl Schultz, the Director of Operations for U.S. Southern Command. You are recognized,
Admiral.
Admiral SCHULTZ. Chairman Hunter, Ranking Member
Garamendi, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today on behalf of General John Kelly,
commander, U.S. Southern Command. I look forward to discussing
how the U.S. Southern Command works with the Coast Guard to
defend the southern approaches to the United States.
Every day, our southern approaches are under direct assault by
sophisticated criminal networks whose smuggling operations reach
across Latin America and deep into the United States. These
groups exploit every land, sea, and air border to traffic drugs, people, and weapons throughout the Western Hemisphere and beyond.
Their corrosive activities pose a direct threat to our national security and the stability of our partner nations in the region.
Mr. Chairman, it will take a network to defeat a network, which
is exactly what SOUTHCOM, the Coast Guard, our interagency,
and international partners are building through multinational
counterdrug operations, and capacity-building efforts in Central
America, South America, and the Caribbean Basin.
As you know, the Department of Defense has a congressionally
mandated statutory responsibility for the detection and monitoring
of illicit drugs in the air and maritime domains. Our Joint Interagency Task Force South executes this responsibility working with
agencies from the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice
Department, the Department of State, and partner nation defense
and security forces to disrupt illicit trafficking and dismantle criminal organizations.
JIATF South has long been the gold standard in leading and orchestrating successful interdiction operations. Last year, the JIATF
South team supported the disruption of 158 metric tons of cocaine.
That is 76 percent of the total amount of cocaine seized by all U.S.
Government agencies.
JIATF Souths continued success, however, could be in jeopardy.
Due to other global defense priorities, limited Department of Defense resources are available to source the counterdrug mission,
and we have been forced to rely heavily on Coast Guard support,
including their personnel, aircraft, and cutters.
Come this September, the U.S. Navy will have a minimal presence in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility. Mr. Chairman, for
all intents and purposes, the Coast Guard is U.S. Southern Commands Navy, which is why we share and echo the Coast Guard
Commandants concern over the Coast Guards ability to sustain its
aging fleet while recapitalizing its fleet of Fast Response, Offshore,
and National Security Cutters.
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As an economy-of-force geographic combatant command, we at
U.S. Southern Command are concerned by the limited availability
of Department of Defense assets, including U.S. Navy frigates, airborne ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance], and national technical means to support our missions. For both the Department of Defense and the Coast Guard, asset shortfalls and potential asset failures are the greatest threats to our ability to defend the United States against the relentless onslaught of
transnational criminal activity and illicit drugs.
Finally, I will close by noting that the possible return of sequestration would be disastrous for the counterdrug mission. It will undermine our ability to remain engaged with our partners, undermine our awareness of threats in the region, and undermine our
ability to stop them before they reach our shores. I look forward to
discussing these and the other issues with you. Thank you.
Mr. HUNTER. Thank you, Admirals.
I am going to start by recognizing myself, and then the other
Members for questions. I guess my first question is, if you take the
Department of Justice, and you take the Department of Homeland
Security, and you basically take everything else that is under that
umbrella, including the DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration],
the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation], local police forces for everything, you can probably guess, do you have a number for how
much they spend on drug interdiction to get to that 24 percent of
the total annual amount?
So if you takeif you interdict 76 percent, it leaves them with
24 percent, I am just curious about the money spent for each one
each bang for the buck there.
Admiral MICHEL. Those figures are available. I dont have them,
but I can provide them on the record. There is a question for the
record.
Mr. HUNTER. Could somebody on the committee just Google that
maybe while we are doing this? Lets just find out what the number is. If you can get all the otherI am just curious.
Admiral SCHULTZ. What I can tell you, Mr. Chairman, from a
DOD [Department of Defense] perspective, about $25 billion goes
into the drug budget, writ large. About $5 billion of that is allocated; about $3.7 billion across for interdiction efforts; I think $1.2
billion or $1.3 billion for international efforts; about 20 percent of
that drug budget goes towards what I call the JIATF South world
to work there. JIATF South consumes about 1.5 percent of that $25
billion budget, to give you a sense. I cant speak to the other agencies to your specific question but
Mr. HUNTER. That is just DOD?
Admiral SCHULTZ. Well, the JIATF South piece of DOD of the
$25 billion total drug budget is sort of how those numbers shake
out.
Mr. HUNTER. But the DOD total drug budget is about $25 billion.
Admiral SCHULTZ. That is the U.S. Government
Mr. HUNTER. Oh, that is the entire. That is the whole effort.
Admiral SCHULTZ. Entire drug budget, across the U.S. Government, writ large, yes, sir.
Mr. HUNTER. All right. Makes sense. Lets go really quick to
interdiction performance because Iwe talked about this the last
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hearing we had. We got into how the standard gets raised or lowered kind of based on every year going forward, and the baseline
can get moved as well, which makes it hard for us to figure out
where the real baseline was or is and where you really come from
where you were, right.
I do know that you said JIATF South, they increased their hits
last year, right, meaning your average take wasyou were hitting
20 percent. Now it is more towards 30 percent?
Admiral SCHULTZ. Sir, JIATF South is currently targeting about
36, 37 percent of the known activities. You know, if you get down
to the success metrics, that is a different set of numbers, but we
are targeting about
Mr. HUNTER. But you are up over last year.
Admiral SCHULTZ. Up over last year, and then when you look
atafter you target them, the next step would be how do you go
about detecting and monitoring them. We detect and monitor about
70 percent of what we target, so start with a number say 1,250,
you look at about one-third of that, and then within that, about 70
percent of those, you are actually putting detection and monitoring
assets against.
When we go out there and fly a Maritime Patrol Aircraft against
a target, we are successfula very high preponderance of an
endgamealmost 90 percent of those that we target and then detect, we actually get a disruption or a seizure at the end of the day.
Mr. HUNTER. So it is not possible, though, for thefor JIATF
Souths interdiction percentage to go up and the Coast Guards,
their numbers, or their goals met to go down, is it?
Admiral SCHULTZ. Sir, our numbers at SOUTHCOM and JIATF
South are inextricably linked to the Coast Guards numbers. I
mean, come this fall, the Coast Guard essentially is the only U.S.
Government ship-providing game in the business here. We will
have some PC179 patrol craft from the Navy, but it is a Coast
Guard game. As I mentioned in my opening statement, the Coast
Guard is SOUTHCOMs Navy moving forward.
Mr. HUNTER. OK. So then my last question then is, so tie those
together. How could the Coast Guard reduce performance target for
cocaine, let me see, from 18.5 to 13.8 percent in fiscal year 2015,
so how can yours go down then as SOUTHCOMs go up?
Admiral MICHEL. I am not sure exactly.
Mr. HUNTER. Or am I missing
Admiral MICHEL. Well, there isit is a little more complicated
than that. So JIATF South supports disruption of cocaine not only
by the Coast Guard but also by other U.S. Government agencies as
well as foreign partners, so they may assist the Government of Colombia or the Government of Canada or the U.K. or the Dutch or
the French who contribute ships to this effort as well as the Central American partners, so they have got a broader scope than the
Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard itself is supported by JIATF South, and our
numbers have been pretty consistent, and it looks like ours is just
a matter of ship effort. So we have alreadylast year we interdicted 91 metric tons of cocaine. That is what the Coast Guard was
actually able to interdict. So far this year, just to date in this fiscal
year, we are at 83 metric tons, not including the 3 that were on
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this semisubmersible, and we have still got 3 months of the year
left to go.
So we are going to up our numbers, if I were guessing on trajectory here, probably up to 110, 115 metric tons when we get done
here.
Mr. HUNTER. And again, this is youryour performance targets
are a percentage of the whole that you know about? What is it a
percentage of?
Admiral MICHEL. So the removal rate is based onthe numerator is the amount of known cocaine removed from the system, and
the denominator is the U.S. Governments best estimate on the
amount of flow that moves through the Western Hemisphere Transit Zone, and their confidence factors that go in there. It is based
on production estimates, so you know, over the imaginary of cocoa
fields and things likes that, plus known interdicted events with a
certain degree of confidence, and then the Coast Guard is accountable for a portion of that.
Last year was 13.9 percent of that Western Hemisphere Transit
Zone that the U.S. Coast Guard was accountable to get, and we got
about 9 percent. And the long pole in the tent there is just simply
numbers of ships. There was more actionable intelligence that
would have allowed us to meet the goal down there, but we didnt
have the ships to be able to do it. It is a pretty simple story.
Mr. HUNTER. OK. And to be clear again then, that is a percentage of the known flow, not the number of ships you are able to
send out to interdict, right?
Admiral MICHEL. That is correct. The removal rate is based on
the known flow, and the USG [U.S. Government] target, writ large,
USG was 36 percent of that flow was the entire USG target of
which the Coast Guard is responsible for 13.9 percent of that.
Mr. HUNTER. OK. Thank you, Admiral. I yield to the ranking
member.
Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. Actually three sets
of questions. Now the first is on assets, the availability of the Coast
Guard, how do you intend to bridge the gap if the Navy is pulling
out and the Offshore Patrol Cutters are not, for another 2 years,
assuming that they are actually going to wind up in that area, how
do you intend to bridge the gap? That is one question. Let us deal
with them one at a time, and then you wont have to write notes
about the questions. So Admiral Michel.
Admiral MICHEL. Well, sir, that is the rub, ultimately, and our
Commandant made an affirmative decision to increase our number
of ships that we commit to the JIATF South effort in the Western
Hemisphere Transit Zone by over 50 percent, and he did that by
taking risk in additional Coast Guard mission sets.
I dont want to talk too much about that in this forum because
some of that involves LE, law enforcement presence in other vectors, but the Commandant took a calculated risk because he felt
the need to commit resources to that area to provide for regional
stability and national security because those countries down there
are really in a fight in addition to all the impacts that they have
here.
So the way that we are bridging that gap is we are providing the
best quality ships we can provide down there, which is our Na-
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tional Security Cutters, which have the best sensor capabilities, the
best day/night AUF [airborne-use-of-force] capability, which the
Commandant has also plussed that up on our commitment of the
airborne-use-of-force capability, which is critical to stop the go-fast
boats, which is about 80 percent of the traffic moves on go-fast
boats.
The other part is to continue to develop our intelligence mechanisms that will allow us to get at that other 30 percent that Admiral Schultz talked about there that we target but we cant detect
because of lack of wide area surveillance or other type of intelligence capabilities, the ability to buy that down, and then trying
to use every type of TTP [tactics, techniques, and procedures] and
asset that we have, whether it is from a helicopter or pursuit boat
to ensure that when we get those detected assets, that we are actually able to interdict then. And then we are waiting for the new assets the come online, sir.
Mr. GARAMENDI. So we have got about a 2-year, maybe a 3-year
period of time here in which it is going to be touch and go. What
are the role of the other countries in the area? You mentioned Colombia, the Coast Guard, Colombias Coast Guard, Panama, and so
forth. Would you speak for a few moments about that?
Admiral MICHEL. Yes, sir. Well, a number of countries down
there have some good capabilities. Mexico, for example, has really
good capabilities, and Colombia has good capabilities as well. Most
of the other partners have very dedicated people but very small
boats and essentially no detection and monitoring capability.
When I was JIATF South Director, for the majority of the Central American partners, we had to actually commit an aircraft to
walk a go-fast boat onto their small craft because they had no
radar, they had no detection capability at all, and probably wont
have any for a long time. So they are committed forces and welltrained people, but they are not very well-equipped.
There are other partners down there that do have good equipment, the French, the Dutch, the Canadians, the U.K. have had
ships in the area and continue to work in the area, and those are
obviously high-end quality ships, and we try to use those as much
as possible. So you have got kind of a mixed bag on the local partners.
I will say this about most of the local partners. They also have
no real prosecution back end. So one of the critical parts about getting U.S. jurisdiction is the ability to exploit those cases for intelligence value to allow you to identify the networks and feed the intelligence cycle, and some of the partner nations, the people go in
there, and we are not sure exactly sort of what happens to them,
but we are not able to get intelligence value from them, sir.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Lets continue on with the other countries.
There has been talk of a billion-dollar foreign aid program for the
triangle countries in Central America, and that is part of this puzzle, it would seem to me. And also, how do you interact in the
training programs that apparently are going to be diminished?
Admiral MICHEL. I will talk about mine, and then SOUTHCOM
also has a large piece in this. Yes, there is a billion-dollar piece,
and a chunk of that, about one-third of it is for security-related
pieces. The Coast Guard actually plays in all the different areas,
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security, governance, and prosperity because of our port security
work, our work with the legal teams that we send down there to
make sure that they have got adequate laws and things like that
to take care of maritime trafficking.
But we have mobile training teams that we put into place down
there who work on them on outboard motor maintenance or working on their communications capability, try to train them to maintain their equipment and how to do law enforcement. We have also
stood up for the first time our support to interdiction and prosecution teams which are composed of a Coast Guard investigative
service agent as well as some of our maritime law enforcement experts who work with the Central American countries to try to ensure that they can take that interdiction that we help them with
and they can bring it into their court system and provide the witnesses and evidence to actually gain prosecutions as well as gain
the intelligence value from the cases.
Mr. GARAMENDI. You have been doing about 2,000 students a
year. Are you going to be able to maintain that, given the budget
cuts?
Admiral MICHEL. Sir, my understanding is that the training
money for the foreign nationals is on track, and part of that money
comes from the Department of Defense and State Department. The
Coast Guard has no organic foreign affairs authority. Most of the
work that we do with foreign nations is done at somebody elses request, so it is funded through either State Department or DOD,
typically under their programs.
Mr. GARAMENDI. And finally, if I might, Mr. Chairman, the issue
of unmanned vehicles both on the water or under the water and
in the air. What efforts are you making to work with the military
or others and your own efforts on these unmanned vehicles?
Admiral MICHEL. So from a Coast Guard perspective, we have
fielded right now the small unmanned aerial systems, the
ScanEagles, and they are on a number of our cutters, including our
National Security Cutters, and we operate those now. We are also
a partner with CBP, Customs and Border Protection, in their
Guardian unmanned aerial system program, which is essentially
Predator B, a marinized Predator B, and we have worked with
them, and they have actually deployed the Guardian down there
into JIATFS AOR [Area of Responsibility], both in the Dominican
Republic and also out of Comalapa, which is a cooperative security
location in El Salvador.
The Coast Guard is actually making its determination now as to
where we want to place our investments in this very dynamic unmanned aerial system, you know, whether we would want to go
with a shipped-based system, which has some attractiveness but
you got to be able to recover it, or whether we use a long-dwell,
land-based system, and what type of sensor capabilities and backend processing piece would we need in order to do that.
But we work hand in hand with the Department of Defense, and
that is one of the great advantages the Coast Guard brings to the
table is we have got all the connections with DOD to try to learn
the lessons before we sort of make the big jump on unmanned aerial systems.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. I for one, and I suspect the rest of my committee colleagues here, would like to be kept abreast of your plans
with regard to these vehicles; also, how you will be collecting and
analyzing the data.
Admiral SCHULTZ. Congressman, just on the UAS [unmanned
aerial system] piece from a DOD perspective, to echo Admiral
Michel, absolutely. We continue to use the Predator when it is
available. You know, I would say the maritime solution for the
UAS, as sophisticated it is in the land domain, what we have seen
in the Middle East area. We are not quite there over the water,
and there is some limitations in terms of where you can operate
that, in terms of it is almost essentially a tether to it. You have
to have a ground-based radar or shipboard radar, but we are very
interested in how do you advance that, how do you bring those capabilities into the theater.
We do use a Global Hawk for some ISR responsibilities, capabilities, capacity in our AOR. We get that on a couple-of-mission-amonth basis, but we are employing them as well. Not specifically
in the maritime domain but in the SOUTHCOM equities.
If there is a second, sir, to go back to just the country team participation, the question you asked there. From U.S. Southern Commands perspective, you know, we have almost 6,000 to 8,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, coastguardsmen in the SOUTHCOM AOR on
a day-to-day basis. I would say the bulk of their effort down there
is along supporting the transnational organized crime, combatting
that mission set.
So in Guatemala, we have the interagency task force at the
Mexican-Guatemalan border. There is one in thethat they are
working on on the Honduras side. There is one down in the southern part of Guatemala. The plan is to build out a couple more of
those task forces. We have got about $15$17 million invested towards that. That is to help the Central American countries establish some border security within their own domain.
Between us and INL [Bureau of International Narcotics and Law
Enforcement Affairs], we are putting a lot ofwhile some of the
countries that Admiral Michel mentioned dont have a lot of big
ship capability, there is some patrol boat capability, and then there
iswe, with INL, are both buying interceptor-type boats, so while
we may not have a shipand again, there is no replacement for
a Navy ship, no replacement for a Coast Guard cutter, but what
we do do is bring some endgame capability. If an aircraft can traffic
a vessel in, we have some pretty sophisticated interceptors, Boston
whalers, we have them in the Dominican Republic, we have them
in the Central American countries.
Some countries prefer that we retake some refurbished former
seized boats, eduardonos, which is a local domestic boat down
there. And then we have got a special purpose Marine Air-Ground
Task Force operating with 250 Marines in Honduras in the sort of
ungoverned spaces in the northeast coast right now.
So we have got a lot of building partnership capacity stuff going
on, and your question was Central America focused, so I kind of
constrained myself there, but on a day-to-day basis, we are training, we are equipping things like night-vision goggles, just essentially helping them bring governance to regions where there are
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very little of that today, and that really props up the security part
of the equation.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank
you for the extra time.
Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman.
The gentleman from South Carolina is recognized.
Mr. SANFORD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess what I would
like to do for one second is go up 30,000 feet, and so this is not
a commentary on how hard your men and women are working, the
quality of their efforts, the hardiness of their pursuit, but really a
macro question, because I remember being in hearings like this the
last time I was in Congress. I remember going down to Howard Air
Force Base, and I remember at that time there wasnt enough
money in drug ops to send up an AWACS [airborne warning and
control system] every day of the week, and so they would send one
up once a week, once every 2 weeks.
And then the smart drug runners, they simply paid for a spotter,
when the plane goes up that has the big dish, let us know, and
then like the really stupid guys, the uninformed guys, they would
still send a boat running north, and you would look at these films
out of an F16 in pursuit of the boat, they are throwing the drugs
out of the boat, and once the boat is emptied, they would turn
around, you burned a bit of jet fuel, you got a good video, but that
was about it, and it was sort of catch-and-release.
In contrast, I remember at that time, as part of our payments to
Peru in the drug ops war, they had a shoot-down policy, and I remember watching videos of planes actually being shot down in
Peru. And so it just seems to me that in war, it is either war or
it is not. And what we have had for a long while in this country
is sort of a middle ground when indeed you and the Navy and others do their duty. But in terms of actual result, really there isnt
that much in the way of result.
I mean, any time you look at equation wherein 75 percent of
what you are trying to stop is going through, then about 25 percent
you are stopping, I mean, you have to question the validity of
spending, you know, $25 billion, 6,000 folks, as you just mentioned,
in this effort, in terms of result. And you look at how scarce dollars
are in the American system, how much scarcer they are going to
get going forward. I mean, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, their
point was the most predictable financial crisis in the history of man
is coming our way, given the squeeze financially that we are going
to be in as a country. And therefore we have, I think a requirement, whether in this committee or any other committee, to fund
those things that actually work.
And so this is not about, again, the validity of your effort, you
guys are working hard, but at the end of the day, the end results,
I found wanting, and in contrast, one more data point. I remember
being down on a drug ops trip, again, last time I was here, and
there had been like 4,000 judges killed in the country of Colombia.
I mean, it was all out war down there, and so Iyou know, I just
really begin to question, are we doing anything? What is your
thought on that?
Admiral MICHEL. Well, let me just take a quick stab. So when
I first started in the Coast Guard in the mid-1980s, I was actually
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assigned on a patrol boat out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and I
would chase go-fast boats laden with cocaine right there into
Miami Harbor, and those were the days of the Cocaine Cowboys
where Miami was really on the brink. Those were the days of the
shootout of the Dadeland Mall and all those things, and I can tell
you, sir, we are a long ways from those days.
We have chased those guys back down through the Caribbean.
They are still there but not in the numbers that they were back
in those days, and now they are in Central America. There is a
huge amount of progress that has been made. We interdicted
Mr. SANFORD. No, we just moved the border. I mean, you say the
Bahamas, you couldnt take a trip in the Bahamas without worrying about pirating in the Bahamas. You dont have to worry
about pirating these days.
Admiral MICHEL. And the reason that is, sir, is because of the
efforts that we put in place here. It is the same reason that the
country of Colombia is actually a productive and advancing country
when it almost was a basket case at one point. So we have made
tremendous progress. Is there a lot more work to do? Yes, sir, there
absolutely is a lot more work to do, but for anybody to say we have
not made measurable progress on this, I think, is misinformed.
Mr. SANFORD. Well, in terms of volume of drugs coming into this
country, we havent really moved the needle there.
Admiral MICHEL. Well, sir, we continue to have that because we
continue to want to trade with the world. If we decided to completely shut down our borders to all trade, we probably could stop
this trade, but we try to balance that out
Mr. SANFORD. And I would reverse it.
Admiral MICHEL [continuing]. With our law enforcement efforts
with other society desires.
Mr. SANFORD. What I would respectfully submit is that when in
the history of man has supply not met demand?
Admiral SCHULTZ. Congressman, I would just offer, I think if
General Kelly were sitting here, he would tell you our countrys insatiable appetite or demand for drugs has sort of put the region,
what we call the transit zone, the Central American countries as
sort of the meat in the sandwich between the Indian Ridge and
producers. I think we have an obligation to aid and probably be
part of the solution set here.
I would make an analogy to speeders on the highway. I have
teenage drivers. I know theres a lot of speeders on the highway.
I know theres not a lot of police officers out there, but I go to sleep
at night knowing theres some police officers that keep some semblance of order out there, and I would say in the drug war, the
transnational crime combatting efforts is sort of, you keep the lid
on it. What we are here telling you with more effort
Mr. SANFORD. Or does it do the reverse?
Admiral SCHULTZ [continuing]. You stop more.
Mr. SANFORD. Does it raise the profit margin?
Admiral SCHULTZ. Sir, I would say if you look at domestic cocaine use in this country, it is at a low that its been in recent
years, prices are fairly high. I think the efforts that the men and
women that are fighting this fight, both from U.S. Government
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forces, from international partners, from partner nations, are having an impact there. Again
Mr. SANFORD. Some people say it is based on demographics, the
fact that our country is aging, and the fact that somebody in their
50s may not be wanting to do what they were doing in their 30s
or their 20s.
Admiral SCHULTZ. Yes, sir. I think we have got kind of an emerging epidemic with heroin use right now, and you know, I think
with 8,500 deaths in this country here in the last year alone from
heroin use, I think folks are seeing folks in places like New Hampshire where you didnt think you had drug problems before, and
parts of Kentucky where that is cropping up. And I think how we
get our arms around that, I guess you could say you stop going
after that or maybe we need to look at the fact that 45 percent of
that heroin comes out of Mexico, 45 percent-plus is coming out of
South America.
Almost all of it now is coming out of this hemisphere through the
same networks that the cocaine is coming up from, sir. So I dont
disagree with you, but there is a lot of ways at looking at this, this
challenge.
Mr. SANFORD. Understood. Understood. And again, I am not belittling in any way your efforts. I am just struggling with the overall aggregate in terms of numbers and the way in which this war
I remember seeing the statistics, the body bag counts, if you will,
back when I was in high school, and us walking through those
same body bag counts in terms of this much cocaine procured, this
much marijuana stopped, but at the end of the day in a lot of small
towns across America, somebody being able to buy whatever they
want in some, you know, corner of town, and which says to me, obviously, we still have a problem.
I see I burnt through my time, though. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. HUNTER. I refuse to be yielded to until theis the gentleman
suggesting that we do what?
Mr. SANFORD. That is the $94 question, and I really appreciate
the chairman putting me on the spot like that. But I guess what
I am struggling with, in watching this for a long number of years
is do you spend more money and more time in affecting demand
as opposed to trying to curtail supply. I mean, I think that is the
big economic question out there, and that is ultimately not one that
you all will resolve.
You are doing your duty, you are doing your part, that which you
are charged, so I admire your work, but I think that is the $94
question we got to ask as a society is do we do something more.
And again, a lot of this ties into stuff that is well beyond any of
our pay grade, straight to the notion of family formation, a lot of
other things that impact demand, poverty, you go down the list,
but I think at the end of the day, the societal question we got to
get our arms around is supply always equals demand.
I remember reading in National Review, James Buckley, who is
by no means a liberal, saying the war is lost. That was the front
page of the National Review way back when, and he made the case,
in that case for liberalization and for legalization and zombie farms
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out West. You would have some number of people lost in either
equation, and do you look at it a different way.
I dont know what the answer is, but I think that is the question
we got to answer that ultimately is beyond your pay grade, and I
suspect it comes down to the pay grade of the Americansyou
know, and civilian population decide how do we address this problem.
Admiral SCHULTZ. Congressman, I think both of us would tell
you, we have sort of run our careers in parallel tracks over more
than 6 years together. There is a balanced approach, you probably
need both, but interdiction, I think, is clearly part of that equation.
Mr. SANFORD. I am less and less certain of that than I was 20
years ago.
Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman. And I would add, too, it is
as much about drugs as it isbecause you can get anything
through the drug route that you can get drugs through, whether
it is a weapon of mass destruction, whether it is weapons, whether
it is some kind of chemical agent, the exact same routes that the
drug smugglers take, the other bad guys who want to come in here
take, too.
Mr. SANFORD. My take, Mr. Chairman, is if you lined up a couple
of Marines on the border, it would take care of the problem.
Mr. HUNTER. Probably true. I would agree with that.
The gentlelady from Florida is recognized.
Ms. FRANKEL. Thank you. Interesting discussion. I am going to
follow up on that, but just first, quick question is, it sounds like
what you are saying here today is that you need more assets to do
a more effective job. Are the new assets, is it new technology or is
it more of the assets that you have and you just need more of
them?
Admiral MICHEL. It is a combination of both, maam. There is a
certain quantity that is necessary to get the work done. On average, a major ship from either the Coast Guard or the Navy working
for a year gets 20 metric tons of cocaine, which is a huge quantity
of cocaine per ship, but each one of those ships can become more
effective if you have more advanced sensor capabilities which allow
them to find things like the semisubmersible.
I know you didnt see the picture of it, but we actually interdicted one of those this morning. I am sure they will share the picture of that with you and how difficult that is, and also the techniques for actually interdicting. So the airborne use of force which
allows us to take on the go-fast boats. So it is a combination of both
quantity, the number of ships that limit our ability to target, and
then the better quality of the ship that allows it to have a better
chance of detecting and interdicting that capability. It is a combination of both, maam.
Ms. FRANKEL. Thank you. I now want to just follow up on Mr.
Sanfords. I thought it was interesting questions you had. I will
just say it in a commentary. I think we spend $310 million a month
in Iraq and Syria, and I think that a lot of people are questioning
that. But I would like you, if you could, in that context, I would
like to hear you make the argument as to the national security argument. Thats what I would like you to have a little more detail
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on, why you feel your mission is so important, how it affects our
national security?
Admiral SCHULTZ. Congresswoman, I would say, and I think
Chairman Hunter sort of opened up this dialogue. You know, General Kellys first and foremost duty as a combatant commander for
U.S. Southern Command is protecting the southern approaches to
the United States for the security of this Nation. These same networks that allow drugs, you know, to the tune oftheres about
1,050 tons of cocaine that come out of the Indian Ridge, the sole
cocaine producing region of the world on an annual basis, about 60
percent660 tons comes to the United States.
It is the same networks that move those drugs, that move, you
know, trafficking and women to the tune of 18,000 or so, moving
cash both ways, weapons, illegal migrants, special interest aliens,
we saw upwards of 500,000 illegals last summer, a subset of
50,000-plus children, those are very sophisticated networks. These
organizations are well financed, they are highly adaptive, and it
doesnt take a lot of imagination to think the same network that
could move cocaine could move, you know, a component to a weapon of mass destruction or something else. They can move an Ebola
patient. You name it. The networks are sophisticated.
You know, my boss sometimes makes analogies. It is like a
FedEx operation. So when you think about the maritime interdiction of drugs and cocaine is what we are specifically talking about
here, you know, we can get the bulk loads of 3,000 kilos, you know,
upwards of 7,000 pounds in one seizure at sea, when that ship
offloads that to a couple of fast boats off of Guatemala or Mexico
and it gets into the land border and gets broken down into small
loads and coming across the border in the grille of a car in a 50kilo load, our ability to stop that is very, very low at that point.
When you interdict it at sea, there is no violence associated with
that removal of 7,000 pounds of cocaine. When that cocaine hits the
landmass, there is a lot of violence associated with that. There is
a lot of graft and corruption associated with that, so the effectiveness is exponentially greater when we can push that border out
and take that, you know, law enforcement endgame into the maritime domain.
Admiral MICHEL. Let me just add one other little piece here. So
I think you are probably aware, but in Mexico and Central America, a number of the countries down there have declared various
states of emergency, and they have actioned their militaries to actually counter this, which is the number-one threat that they face
down there. They dont really have a nation state on nation state
war problem, but they have a transnational criminal organization
network.
It should concern every American that the Mexican armed forces
are having to be on the streets of Mexico taking on the cartels because their law enforcement has been completely outstripped by
these criminal organizations.
When you look at El Chapo Guzman, Los Cano Los Cano from
the Zetas cartel, or Trevino Morales from the Zetas cartel, they
were not taken down by Mexican local police or even Mexican Federal police. They were taken down by Mexican marines who were
there trying to defend their country against these transnational
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criminal organizations who basically rot the state from the inside
out through intimidation, corruption, all the different things that
they do, and this is one of our closest neighbors.
And Mexico is a serious country. And to have a situation caused,
at least in part, because of what American citizens are putting up
their noses, to create that type of a national security situation in
one of our closest neighbors should be a concern to every American
beyond the public health problems that it creates in this country.
Ms. FRANKEL. OK. Thank you very much.
Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentlelady. The gentleman from Louisiana is recognized.
Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it.
Admiral, thank you very much. It is nice to see you. You clean
up well. Your old commander threads till today, good to see you.
First of all, there was a hearing that the chairman had worked
out with the HASC [House Armed Services Committee] that we
had back in March where, Admiral Michel, you were there. And the
topic was different but the theme was exactly the same in that it
was talking all about the total maritime force package and the role
that the Coast Guard plays in that.
We talked at length about the fact that thethat you are only
as strong as your weakest link and that the Coast Guard plays a
critical role in that overall maritime total force strategy or total
force package. And so we are sitting here talking about your capabilities. And we are talking about your ability to actually perform
the mission that you are tasked with, whether it is drug interdiction, alien interdiction, and many of the other missions that the
Coast Guard has had heaped upon it over the last several years.
One of the things that we talked about a little bit in the past,
I am going to bring it up again, the OPC. Can you talk a little bit
about its role in you carrying out your duties, whether it is under
the Cooperative Strategy for 21st-Century Seapower or it is your
drug and alien interdiction mission?
Admiral MICHEL. Well, it is absolutely critical, sir, in that the
OPC is the replacement for the Medium Endurance Cutter which
is the bulk and real workhorse of the Coast Guards fleet, and we
have got about 25 in the program of record of the OPC. The OPC
is a sea state 5
Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. And I want to be clear, your MECs
[Medium Endurance Cutters] are all aging out.
Admiral MICHEL. The average age even if everything goes on
scheduleaverage age for a 270-foot cutter when it comes off the
line is 35, average age for a 210-foot cutter is 55.
Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. OK. So we are beyond service life.
Admiral MICHEL. Yes, sir.
Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. You need the OPC. It is going to give
you better capabilities. I dont want to put words in your mouth,
if you could agree or disagree with that. Could you agree or disagree that the OPC is going to give you better capabilities?
Admiral MICHEL. It does provide better capabilities. It is a modern system and it is a sea state 5 capable ship.
Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. And it does help youand again, I
am not trying to put words in your mouth. I am asking for con-
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firmation. It does help you to achieve your objectives within the
overall maritime mission that you are tasked with.
Admiral MICHEL. No question.
Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. OK. So then we get to the budget request, and in the budget request, as we have just spoken about in
the past, you have some very confusing language about no funding
in there, but you are going to transfer funding, but you havent
identified the source, and I am not saying you, you understand, my
friends at OMB, perhaps.
Can you talk a little bit about, about how these things actually
line up? I mean, how is it that you are going to be able to achieve
your mission in working together with the Navy and the other
armed forces, how is it that you are going to be able to carry out
your mission with regard to drug and alien interdiction and other
missions the Coast Guard is tasked with whenever you are dealing
with equipment that is well beyond its projected service life and
there are not funds in the budget for you to achievefor you to acquire new resources?
Admiral MICHEL. Yes, sir. I mean, that is the quandary in the
world that I live in, and I will just give you an example. So on our
210-foot fleet, which is the older one, right now we lose about 20
percent of our scheduled time due to unscheduled maintenance, so
these are, you know, major whole failures and other things that
happen on that class of ship, and that situation only gets worse
with time, so we need to replace that.
And the OPC, you hit the nail on the head. The current plan is
that there will be an internal transfer within DHS of the roughly
$69 million we need to do to proceed with detailed design work.
Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. But we dont know which couch to flip
it over to find that?
Admiral MICHEL. I dont want to phrase it that way. Right now,
the best that I have is I have assurances that that money transfer
is going to take place and that the OPC is on schedule.
Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. One of the other things I am going
toI changed gears a little bit, but certainly the OPCs capabilities
in regard to source and transit zones makes sense, but just quickly,
Mr. Chairman, if it is OK. I am curious, could you talk a little bit
about its capabilities and in terms of the Arctic and ops up there?
Admiral MICHEL. Right. So part of the reason it needs to be a
sea state 5 capable ship is because this is not a one-for-one replacement with the Medium Endurance Cutter fleet. As a matter of fact,
the 210-foot and 270-foot cutters, basically we tried to work those
up in Alaska, and that is just too much weather. The distances are
too great, and the weather is just horrendous.
So those ships really do not work, the 210-, 270-foot cutters up
in the Bering. But because we are not a one-for-one replacement,
we have got to have more flexibility with thewhere we can assign
those ships, and with a sea state 5 capable ship, that OPC can actually operate on a seasonal basis up there in that Alaskan area
where we need it.
It is not going to be an ice capable ship or anything like that,
but if you can understand that point, that is why we need sea state
5 capability because it is not a one-for-one replacement program.
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Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. Sure. And it will work complementary to your new ice breakers that we will be acquiring sometime
soon, correct?
Admiral MICHEL. Well, I hope so, sir. I know they are kind of a
twinkle in somebodys eye, and we should probably have some discussion about that, but yes, sir, they are all designed to work together as a system.
Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. Sure. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman.
The gentleman from Florida is recognized.
Mr. CURBELO. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for this
hearing, and I thank Rear Admiral Schultz and Vice Admiral
Michel for their presence here today. As the Representative from
Floridas southernmost district, I have a very special appreciation
for the Coast Guard and its mission. Thank you for keeping our
people safe and secure.
I am hoping you can address generally this phenomenon we are
seeing of drug transit routes shifting to the Caribbean. Have you
seen a spike in the past several years and what impact has this
had on your budget?
Admiral SCHULTZ. Good afternoon, Congressman, and so good to
see you, and thanks for your support of the men and women in
JIATF South. I know you were down there as recently as April
here.
Mr. CURBELO. Yeah that is right.
Admiral SCHULTZ. I would say in terms of the shift to the Caribbean, we have seen a shift in recent years here. I think, A, that
shift is attributable to some of the successes we have had along the
Central American corridor. Writ large, about 80 percent of the cocaine that comes out of the Indian Ridge destined towards the
United States comes through the central corridor, Central American corridor, some in the Pacific, some in the western Caribbean,
but as we have had successes there, as we partnered with the
Hondurans, their maritime shield, I think it is the balloon effect.
You know, the squeeze of the balloon in that region has pushed
some more activity to the eastern Caribbean route there, so we are
aware of that.
I think at the end of the day when you are dealing with a finite
number of ships, and you know, the Coast Guard currently in this
fiscal year had 6 ships6.2 ships committed to the whole JIATF
mission set here, that is across the EASTPAC [eastern Pacific] and
the Caribbean. The Navy has had one ship. So you are taking
seven ships on a good day, maybe some partnerships, and you are
spreading them around, you know, we put some energy towards
at the JIATF, we put some energy in that eastern Caribbean route,
but when, you know, you are in the teens, percentagewise, versus
knowing 80 percent of its moving in either side of the Central
American isthmus there, it is sort of ait is sort of their decision.
But that said, theres a lot of challenges in Puerto Rico with increasing violence. Puerto Rico has a homicide rate five times that
of here in the States. Domestically it is about 5 per 100,000 people.
I think it is 25 per 100,000 there, weapons coming in. So we are
very in tune with that. The Coast Guard has been working Operation Unified Resolve there, and I will defer to Admiral Michel for
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specifics there, but as we at the Southern Command are working
with the new DHS joint task force, working with other participants
there, working with NORTHCOM, because NORTHCOM really,
from a geographic combatant commander standpoint, knows the
Puerto Rico region, we are looking at how do we bring some energy
to that challenge.
Politically, that has been a very hot area, so we are aware of
that. So there is success there, and there is challenge there, and
we are trying to attenuate that with a finite amount of bandwidth.
Admiral MICHEL. If I could just add a couple of points here. One
thing we watch very carefully is Venezuela. I think you have seen
Venezuela has got some stability issues, and unfortunately, the
traffickers are exploiting that, so we have seen what Admiral
Schultz mentioned there about additional flows coming out of Venezuela, and a lot of those impact the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico and the eastern Caribbean, so we are going to have to
watch that very carefully.
Also adding onto Admiral Schultz, the standup of the Secretary
of Homeland Securitys new unity of effort joint task forces, of
which Puerto Rico and southern Florida are all captured within
what is called Joint Task Force East, which is actually dual hatted
with our land area commander up in Norfolk, but they bring the
entire DHS family together, so CBP, ICE [U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement], Coast Guard, the other supporting elements, all in the unity of effort format, along the lines of JIATF,
if you know the way that they work, where they truly have a unified chain of command. This is not a sort of coordination element.
This is real command and control from the Department of Homeland Security, and we are looking for great things from them along
those vectors stretching into Puerto Rico and also south Florida.
We are also watching the Cuba situation like we always do. Right
now the Cuban Government is pretty good counterdrug, but we are
going to have to see if that changes over time, but we watch that
very carefully, sir.
Mr. CURBELO. Since you mentioned Cuba, and with the chairmans dispensation because it doesnt have to deal specifically with
drug trafficking, but we have seen a spike in migrant movement
from Cuba to the United States. Do you attribute that to something
specifically, and do you feel that you are prepared at this time for
a potential mass migration of them?
Admiral MICHEL. We did see a spike here at the end of last year
and into the beginning of this year, and when we interviewed the
migrants, they said we heard that the wet foot/dry foot policy was
going to be changing, so we want to make sure we got there. We
have had a public relations campaign out there telling people that
that is not true and making sure that they understand what the
facts are.
And here over the summer, I think it has been relatively stable
within kind of historic norms. And as always, we are ready for a
mass migration, sir, and we watch that all the time and watch very
carefully indicators and warnings both there and also in Haiti, the
Dominican Republic, and those vectors where we have got some
issues percolating. So we watch that very carefully, but we are
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ready with our Homeland Security Task Force Southeast, which is
specifically designed to deal with these mass migration events.
Mr. CURBELO. Thank you both. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman. We are going to keep going
here. We had really great participation today. You get more and
more popular the more you come back, people start to like you. We
will have full subcommittee here in a couple of years.
Let me ask you about the NSC [National Security Cutter] really
quick. You have a gap. You have a gap between nowbetween this
year and 2018 where youre not working on anything. Well, you are
working on the OPC design stuff but you have a gap. There are
some folks in this Congress and in this Senate that want to fill
that gap for you with an extra NSC. What do you feel about that?
And then if you would, not just say how do you feel about it, how
would ithow would it affect drug interdiction ops; in
SOUTHCOM, what would it do for you; could you use it? Could
SOUTHCOM use it? I mean, you might have to take off your Coast
Guard hat and put on your SOUTHCOM hat, and SOUTHCOM
probably wants that ship.
Admiral SCHULTZ. Sir
Mr. HUNTER. But the Coast Guard may not.
Admiral SCHULTZ [continuing]. All day. Any ship, Coast Guard
ship, Navy ship, is value add for the equation.
Mr. HUNTER. OK. Got that one.
Admiral MICHEL. Easy for him to say. He doesnt have to pay the
bills.
But, no, the NSC is an incredible ship, sir. It is the most capable
ship the Coast Guard has ever had. We are ecstatic with the NSC.
And I just want to go on the record. Same time, it is not within
our program of record, and we designed our program of record to
be affordable and best meet our needs, and that ninth NSC is not
a part of that.
And we cannot allow that to interfere with our other programs
because, for example, on the OPC, that is the workhorse of the
fleet, much cheaper ship to operate, plus it is smaller and can get
into some of the dock spaces and things that we have. The NSC
is just a much bigger ship, and that is why it was not a part of
the program of record. Not because it is a great ship, but it is not
within our affordability characteristics.
And, obviously, if someone were to give one of those to usand
I hope it would not interfere with the other things that we need
in the systemthen your Coast Guard stands ready to use that
ship, sir.
Mr. HUNTER. If you get a ship like that, do you actually see the
needle move, depending on how much you interdict based off of a
ship like that that has as much capability as it has?
Admiral MICHEL. Sir, that is the best ship available. I wont use
the word Cadillac, sir, because I know you called me on that last
time. But the NSC has the best sensor capabilities, the best command-and-control suite, operates the best helicopters, and is the
best that we have in the fleet. It has got the endurance. It has got
the speed. If you were to design a ship to work in this mission set,
it would be the NSC.
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So it is the best that we can possibly bring to the fight, but it
is also expensive. And its magnitude is more expensive than the
OPC, which wont have as many capabilities but hopefully will
have more of them.
That kind of goes to Ms. Frankels question of a balance between
quality and quantity at a certain level, and we tried to do that in
our program of record in addition to making sure the program is
affordable.
Mr. HUNTER. The Coast Guard has built the Navys littoral combat ship for them. And we are all very thankful. When we copy
that and take it from you to give to the Navy, I think they will be
appreciative.
Admiral MICHEL. I wish they would send me a thank-you note,
sir.
Mr. HUNTER. I want to get back if we could just really quick to
when we were talking about levels of capability and your internal
performance targets in the very beginning, right. Can you go
through how you set those, just, you know, from the ground up for
me?
Admiral MICHEL. Well, the Office of the National Drug Control
Policy sets what the national goal is, and it is
Mr. HUNTER. Forty percent?
Admiral MICHEL. Well, it is 36 percent in 2015, 40 percent in
2016, and that is along the formulas we describe, their sort of
known interdiction versus the known flow, and there are formulas
that underlie each one. So they sent
Mr. HUNTER. Wait, let me ask, do they tie that to your capability, or do they just come up with that based on there is going
to be more drugs coming across so we are going to up you 4 percent
as our target or up the entire thing 4 percent?
Admiral MICHEL. No, sir. It was actually a result of a study done
a number of years ago that actually brought in some economists
and some very smart people and came to the conclusion that if you
could interdict 40 percent of the cocaine flowand they were looking at the cocaine tradethat you could actually force the traffickers to change their business model in a radical method. And
there is actually an intellectual basis for why that 40 percent was
set that way.
Then it was negotiated amongst the interagency partners as to
what were achievable goals for each year in order to get to that 40
percent. And there were studies done specifically on what it would
take for the maritime interdiction forces to get to that 40 percent.
And the study, my recollection, and I looked at the study when I
was in JIATF South is that they figured that we would need about
16 ships in order to do the 40 percent, at the time that study was
done. Now, this was done a number of years ago.
Now, some things have changed. The ships have gotten better.
The technology has gotten better. The intelligence capabilities have
gotten better. So 16 ships is probably an overstatement, in my
opinion, up to this point, but even now, we are not fielding anything even approaching 16 ships in order to get down there at the
40 percent that need to be done. So there is analysis behind all
that. And it is also run through an interagency negotiation process
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based on historical data. And that is where you come up with the
Coast Guards contribution.
And when you look at that historical data for our contribution of
the removal, it converts directly into our resource commitments to
the fight and what we think we can provide to the fight and what
type of capabilities we can provide to the fight. Again, there is pretty good historical data that over a number of years, that for each
capital ship that is put downrange by the U.S.and also some of
our foreign, the high-end foreign partners1 year of ship effort is
about 20 metric tons removed. So you can kind of do the math from
there.
Now, part of it is beyond our control, you know, how much the
traffickers plant, how much they move that year, what their production estimates, how much they decide to send to the U.S. and
how much they decide to send to other global markets. So it is a
difficult problem set, and recognize, the adversary does everything
possible to keep all this from us. I mean, they want this all to remain in the dark. So it is based on our best estimates.
Mr. HUNTER. So your numbers going down from 18.5 percent to
13.8 percent over 5 years, that is based on what you had to do the
job with. Is that how it goes?
Admiral MICHEL. That is based on the Coast Guard commitment,
yes, sir. That is what we sign up for in order toour portion of the
national goal for the removal rate in the Western Hemisphere
Transit Zone and then that converts into the number of assets we
can put into the fight, which varies. Sometimes our assets get
pulled off in different directions. Sometimes we can do more. Sometimes we can do less.
Mr. HUNTER. So what made it drop from 18 percent to 13 percent?
Admiral MICHEL. Ship effort. It is pretty simple math from a
Coast Guard perspective, sir. It is justit is the number of ships
and capable ships that are brought into the fight.
Mr. HUNTER. Let me ask you a question that I am just curious
about: Has the Pacific shift for the Navy to Asia had any play at
all in anything that happens in your AO [area of operation]?
Admiral MICHEL. I will let Admiral Schultz jump in here, but
just from a Coast Guard perspective, our admiral, Admiral
Zukunft, talks specifically about this. And he understands the
geostrategic perspective and understands the Navy gets pulled in
a lot of different directions, and that is specifically why he committed additional Coast Guard resources to the Western Hemisphere Transit Zone. He said: This is an area where I can provide
unique capability and be complementary to the other geopolitical
moves that the combatant commanders are putting in place.
Mr. HUNTER. So just, if I could dovetail with that too, then does
the Coast Guard see a place for itself in the Pacific, in the South
China Sea, as opposed to the Navy? Because our fellow peer nation
in that area uses their Coast Guard for that exact thing.
Admiral MICHEL. I get asked that question all the time, sir. Unfortunately, with every single combatant commander, there is more
demand out there and more relevance for the Coast Guard than
there is Coast Guard. And our Commandant has been specifically
asked to provide resources to not only PACOM [Pacific Command]
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but all the other combatant commanders. And right now his best
judgment is our Coast Guard resources are going to be put in the
Western Hemisphere Transit Zone because this is an area of regional stability and national security where the Coast Guard can
provide unique benefit to the Nation.
And that is his judgment. But it is a risk calculation, no question
about it. The Coast Guard is increasingly relevant in the area, and
when you see the bumping and all the other things going on, they
are Coast Guard boats and typically not gray hulls doing that stuff,
sir.
Mr. HUNTER. Admiral Schultz.
Admiral SCHULTZ. Congressman, the only thing I would add to
that, you know, the pivot to the Pacific obviously is the demand
signal there. I think there is also sort of the perfect storm of the
decommission of the fast frigates from a budgetary standpoint. The
Perry-class frigates, the last one is on patrol today. Once that ship
finishes up her current JIATF patrol, we wont see any frigates
here for the foreseeable future.
The LCSs, littoral combat ships, which have been renamed the
frigates, will probably not come to the SOUTHCOM AOR for 3 to
5 years here, given that pivot to the Pacific and the rate of recapitalization.
Mr. HUNTER. With that, the ranking member has no more questions. I have no more questions, unless you have any closing comments you would like to give.
Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. Mr. Chairman.
Mr. HUNTER. Oh, I am sorry. Go ahead. Gentleman from Louisiana.
Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Admiral Schultz, you just talked about the decommissioning of
the frigates, and as I recall, I believe you have three that are being
decommissioned now that does affect your area of operation. I am
just continuing this theme. You talked earlier about the inability
to meet the Office of National Drug Control Policys target of 40
percent. You are losing frigates. You are not budgeting for new capabilities. Your AC&I [acquisition, construction, and improvements] account is going down not up. Can you comment on the conditions on the ground and how it affects your mission?
Admiral SCHULTZ. Well, I would say from the SOUTHCOM commanders perspective, you know, capacity is the spigot, you know.
We still operate with that 16 number that Admiral Michel talked
about, three large cutters, which would be, you know, your National Security Cutter, your former High Endurance Cutters or
maybe a cruiser, destroyer from the Navy. And 13, those would be
your to be built OPCs, currently the Medium Endurance Cutters;
those were the Perry-class frigates.
So, at the end of the day, it is about capacity from a
SOUTHCOM perspective. And, you know, that ship with a helicopter, with the ability to launch a small boat, the ability to move
around agilely within the AOR, which translates to a Coast Guard
cutter, a Navy ship, some of our high-end partners, you know, you
associate a number about 20 millionor 20 metric tons, as Admiral
Michel talked about. It is a math equation.
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Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. I certainly dont want to get anybody
in trouble here, but is there a way that you can carefully answer
the question about, you have got a major loss of connectivity here.
Again, heaping missions upon you, setting targets that I am confident if you were properly capitalized, you could achieve, yet they
arent providing the resources for you to actually do that. Where do
you see the lack of connectivity here?
Admiral SCHULTZ. Well, I think, sir, the lack of connectivity is
clearly budgetarily related. I think where we focus our efforts at
Southern Command, I think where the Coast Guard does is, you
know, how do you work as smart as possible within the workspace
you have while you wait for the recapitalization of new ships?
You know, we look at a resource like the Joint STARS, which
flies maritime patrol capability. One Joint STARS flight equates to
about 10 P3 flights. It can surveil that much ocean on one mission
here. We will fly that sometimes in conjunction with a B52 or another type of bomber. Sometimes they will fly solely. We could fly
a Joint STAR on the Caribbean base, and they could actually see
traffic in the eastern Pacific.
So theres the capacity piece on the surface side, which I talked
about. Theres other ways to, you know, stay in the game and work
smarter with what you have here and pray for better days for more
ships to come to the future. I would tell you, there is no bigger advocate to endorse the Coast Guards recapitalization needs because
of the challenges we have. And, again, it is transnational organized
crime.
Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. Sure.
Admiral SCHULTZ. We can take the discussion down to just
drugs, but it is about regional stability. And the Coast Guard presence down there, the Navy ships with LEDETs [law enforcement
detachments], they are all about, you know, bringing some sanity
to that challenge there.
Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. So you said it is Admiral Michels
fault?
Admiral SCHULTZ. Congressman, you said that, not me. I may
need to go back and work for the Coast Guard.
Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. No, Admiral, look, I just want to be
clear. Every hearing that we have, I think that a number of us are
going to continue to pound that theme. There is a lack of
connectivity here. You are being tasked with missionswe described you as a Swiss Army knife at the HASC hearing in regard
to all the missions that are being heaped upon you. You are not
being capitalized. There is a loss of connectivity between the work
that you are being tasked with and the resources of the capitalization that you are being given.
You have got a great workforce. The men and women of the
Coast Guardand I will put my oil spill comments aside for just
a minuteare some great people that work incredibly hard. And I
am confident, if given the proper resources, they could hit the targets that you put in place.
I just want to make sure that you are continuing to beat the
drum up your chain of command. We obviously are continuing to
do the same thing. I am looking forward to the appropriations bill
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when it comes to the floor because I think we have got some priorities that need to be addressed.
Let me ask you one last question. The chairman and Congressman Sanford both addressed the issue of when you have open
lanes, you can send anything through them, whether it is aliens,
whether it is drugs, whether it is a terrorist or weapons or what
have you. I assume you would agree with that?
Admiral MICHEL. Absolutely, sir. Just take a look at that picture
of that self-propelled semisubmersible. My guess is that probably
has a carrying capacity of maybe 5 to 7 metric tons of anything
that you want, and it can approach the United States almost
undetectable. Most of those SPSSsnow, they are kind of in
version four of those things3,500-, 4,000-mile range, you know,
the fact that we have sort of through our consumption patterns allowed the creation of really a bad guy battle lab for the development of these dark highly mobile asymmetric maritime targets
should concern everybody.
Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. And do you often see comingled loads,
meaning drugs and aliens together and things like that?
Admiral MICHEL. Actually, rarely. We do see comingled drug
loads. So we just had a load of heroin and cocaine. But, interestingly, typically, you will either get a drug boat or you will get a
migrant boat.
Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. OK.
Admiral SCHULTZ. And, Congressman, one thing the DEA has
said publicly, I think it is 27 of 54 known terrorist organizations
have proven links through drug trafficking. So there is clearly that
nexus of, you know, transnational organized crime, illicit drug trafficking, and the potential for more nefarious activities.
Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. Sir. Thank you all very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. HUNTER. Thank you.
One last question here. Marijuana, so say that you legalized
weed throughout the entire country, right. Would that have any
impact whatsoever on what you are doing?
Admiral MICHEL. It is hard to say under what circumstance they
would be legalized. As long as the traffickers can make a profit,
they are going to be there. I mean, this goes to Mr. Sanfords question. You know, if they can undercut the marijuana market by
growing marijuana overseas and putting it in the United States,
even under a legalization scheme where you pay more, my guess
is they would probably do it. I mean, that istraffickers are going
to make money.
Mr. HUNTER. Well, what would it do? Because you interdict more
cocaine than anything else, right? But that is also what you are
trying to interdict more of, correct?
Admiral MICHEL. Absolutely. Cocaine really is the money product. And a lot of the problems in Central America, it is not because
of marijuana that is being dragged across there. Most of the marijuana is being made in the U.S. or Mexico or somewhere like that.
It is because of the cocaine trade that exists here, and it is so insidious because it is a very high-value, very small product.
You have got to smuggle a lot of marijuana to make the same
amount in cocaine, and that makes it more vulnerable, makes it
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more vulnerable to border tactics, like fences, makes it more vulnerable in the panga arenaI know that you are aware ofin San
Diego and things. But the cocaine is incredibly dangerous. And
once it gets past the JIATF forces and the Coast Guard forces down
there, it is basically done. You are not going to get it.
When I was JIATF South Director, the average cocaine seizure,
which was pretty rare on the Southwest border, was 4 to 7 kilos.
A major seizure was 40 kilos. That one semisubmersible that I
showed you there, 3,000 kilos. And you got that on the water before
it got into Mexico and corrupted that government official, killed
that kid in the drive-by shooting, plus you have got witnesses and
evidence that can actually get you to the kingpins, so the head of
the network that set all that stuff in motion. So it is the beauty
of maritime interdiction. And so traffickers will make money if
there is money to be made, sir.
Admiral SCHULTZ. Congressman, I think when we had the conversation about the violence, the judges, you know, I think for my
boss, General Kelly, when he is down there talking to the CHODs
[chiefs of defense], the ministers of defense, the MODs, I think
there is a certain level of credibility here, you know, when they
look at him and say: Well, General, your country is legalizing marijuana. You know, how committed are you to this fight here? You
know, we have got our frontline men and women, whether that is
law enforcement folks, whether that is their military because they
have to bring their military to establish some security, it creates
a bit of a credibility gap that the U.S. Government is truly committed to the fight.
Mr. HUNTER. Last question I have. Have you seen full
submersibles now? Because I think I was watching something, it
was either Vice on HBO or some documentary, where they had
the full submersibles.
Admiral MICHEL. Yes, sir. As a matter of fact, I toured a fully
submersible vessel that was seized by the Colombian Navy, with
some help from the United States, at its construction site in Bahia
Malaga, Colombia. I have toured that vessel. That vessel is capable
of going from Colombia to Los Angeles unrefueled in a snorkeling
state.
We also seized a semisubmersible in San Lorenzo, Ecuador, in
2010. That is a fully submersible craft that can operate under the
water. I can talk to you more offline about the operating characteristics, but that can carry 7 to 10 metric tons of anything that you
want basically undetected from Ecuador to Los Angeles.
Mr. HUNTER. OK. So lets step away from SOUTHCOM totally.
I am just curious, when does the Coast Guard realize that you
gotyou will have multinational, you know, terrorist organizations
mixed with really easy to make full submersibles, where you can
drop off anybody and anything, when do those two things come together for you?
Admiral MICHEL. Well, I will let Admiral Schultz talk a little bit
more about the terrorist connections, but the FARC [Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia], for example, which is declared a terrorist organization, is a drug-trafficking organization, and they are
the ones who financed the semisubmersible construction, a large
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number of those things. So you already have that convergence, sir.
It is already there.
Mr. HUNTER. But the FARC likes to have power and make
money, right. They dont necessarily want to kill a million Americans so they can go see their God, right? That is the difference between radical Islam that I am talking about and bad crime organizations. Or, I mean, to a certain extent, I think I am correct there.
Admiral MICHEL. I am not willing to put my trust in the FARC,
sir.
Mr. HUNTER. OK.
Admiral SCHULTZ. And I think Congressman, you know, when
you look at that convergence, I think if you look to Latin America,
you know, within South America, you have upwards of 75, 80 cultural centers, Iranian cultural centers. I think you have a Lebanese
Hezbollah center of gravity there where I think there is indications
that they are raising tens of thousands, you know, tens of millions
of dollars there. You know, is it just fundraising and money that
goes back to Libya? You know, do they have other activities afoot?
You know, do we have any connection to IJO type activities?
You know, I think, we watch that. And one of our challenges at
SOUTHCOM is we get a fairly small percentage of the overall DOD
ISR. So our challenge is, we dont know what we dont know. But
with what we have, we try to, you know, stay aware of the
transnational organized crime, but we are also paying attention to,
you know, what threats on the counterterrorism front are potentially, you know, to our southern flank there.
Mr. HUNTER. Would it be fair to say that you would be the first
ones to know if some folks out of the Middle East started using
these tactics?
Admiral MICHEL. I think that that is fair to say, sir. The enterprise that we have arrayed here before you really is the early
warning sensor for the entire sort of southern approaches to the
United States. We are it.
Mr. HUNTER. Thank you very much. This is probably one of the
most informative, interesting topics in hearings that we have had.
So thank you both, gentlemen. Appreciate it.
And, with that, we are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:33 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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House Hearing, 114TH Congress - Western Hemisphere Drug Interdiction Efforts

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House Hearing, 114TH Congress - Western Hemisphere Drug Interdiction Efforts

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WESTERN HEMISPHERE DRUG INTERDICTION

JUNE 16, 2015

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For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office

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COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE

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Summary of Subject Matter ....................................................................................

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

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WESTERN HEMISPHERE DRUG INTERDICTION

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